A review by bkish
Dante: A Life by Alessandro Barbero

4.0

This is difficult to read unless you are a medieval history person. Also without having read Dante I doubt one would have any interest in this book. This as another Goodreads reader wrote so well is not a book about Dante 's literary achievements and analyses of his writings his poetry. It is as the title says about his life and those times in 1300 in Italy about Guelphs and Gibellines and the White and Black Guelphs and about the dominating political world then and how all of that determined most of Dante's life that was spent in exile from Florence. There are tie ins to some of his Cantos in Divine Comedy. There is of course discussion of his idealizd love for Beatrice who I didnt know died at age 25.
It is a very scholarly writing and the author is an historian and has done his studies and research. I do wish he had done more to tie together the writings of Dante especially his Divine Comedy with his life and the times and he did that a bit tho for me not enough as it is such a fertile field for that kind of careful analysis.
Also I would like to know what was his connection to his companion thru the Circles of the Inferno - Vergil and maybe I should re read it Purgatory Inferno Paradise...
- to b continued -
I visited in Florence the home of Dante (which tho he lost during the political upheaval that sent him out of Florence and took from him what he owned and his own family) and I want to look at what I got from there... then to be continued

Judy g